What is the Boo App?
App Store description: Boo is your own 3D avatar. Customize your avatar with tons of face features, hair styles and outfits. Decorate your Boo home with a variety of stylish items. Have fun with friends by visiting each other’s home, sending & receiving greetings, collaborating in camera, generating dual stickers and making cool videos. (Copied from the Apple App Store)
This app was formerly called Boomoji. In December 2018, it was discovered that Boomoji exposed millions of users’ contact lists and location data due.
Category:Â Social Networking
APP Store rating:Â 9+, for “Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence”
What do parents need to know about Boo?
It’s social media. It would be easy to miss this attribute because it’s not real people with real pictures interacting with each other. When the interactions occur between animated versions of real people, it seems more like a game than social media (with chat if you use BOO!, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.).
Related Post: What’s the Right Age to Give My Kid Social Media?
You can send an anonymous love letter. Users are able to send an anonymous love letters to their crush. If he/she crushes them back, then the two will be matched. In order to do this, access to the phone’s contacts must be granted.
What about privacy on the app? The usual items are collected, including email and password (when you register), if you login with Facebook, you give access to your user ID and user name or email address, information of your Facebook account, and your friends. The app uses a photo, but the policy specifically states that it does not store the photo on its servers nor does it sell them to third parties.
Are there hidden browser doorways in Boomoji? None that we could find. Links in the settings launched Safari outside of the app, which is what we prefer. At least there you can set Content Restrictions in Screen Time.
Related post: Parental Controls for Apple iPhone and iPad
Here’s a progression while creating an account:
The bottom line – is Boo safe?Â
Due to COPPA, the social media classification indicates that kids need to be 13 in order to use this. As you can see from the risk factors above, there aren’t many so if you’re going to allow a middle school child to use Boo, just be sure to make them aware of “tricky people” – the new stranger danger in the digital age, in case a 3D avatar they don’t know is “too” friendly.Â
Related post: Tricky People – the New Stranger Danger for the Digital Age
What if I have more questions? How can I stay up to date?
Two actions you can take!
- Subscribe to our tech trends newsletter, the PYE Download. About every 3 weeks, we’ll share what’s new, what the PYE team is up to, and a message from Chris.
- Ask your questions in our private parent community called The Table! It’s not another Facebook group. No ads, no algorithms, no asterisks. Just honest, critical conversations and deep learning! For parents who want to “go slow” together. Become a member today!
